


I Loved You (Even When You Weren't There)

by goldenzingy46



Series: Tomarry Works [20]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Angst, Angst and Feels, Drinking to Cope, Drowning, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Minor Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Oblivious Harry, Pining, Suicide Attempt, Unrequited Love, World Travel, no beta we perish like tom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29066058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenzingy46/pseuds/goldenzingy46
Summary: Harry marries Ginny.Tom tries to cope.(He's got to leave, or he's going to drown.)
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Unrequited Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Series: Tomarry Works [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2091711
Comments: 34
Kudos: 53





	I Loved You (Even When You Weren't There)

Harry Potter was not in love with Tom Riddle.

Harry Potter was in love with Ginny Weasley, had been since he was sixteen, was still when he proposed to her, smile crooked and eyes shining, in their favourite restaurant that was just a touch too expensive for either of them but worth it anyway, and would still be at eighty years old, white haired and wrinkled but delighted all the same.

The entire Weasley family were left in a wash of excitement after finding out the news, planning weddings, asking Tom to be the best man, planning flower arrangements and suits and dresses and tasting cakes. The only one that bothered to stop was Ron.

Ron had laid a hand on Tom’s shoulder, and whispered, “I’m so sorry, mate.”

They’d watched the stars together, that night.

Tom knew Hermione knew that Tom was in love with Harry Potter. The sympathetic looks she kept giving him probably gave it away.

-

_“Have you ever been in love with someone who loved somebody else?”_

_“No,” Harry murmured, eighteen and draped over the railings on the Astronomy Tower, cigarette artfully hanging from his lips. “I think Ginny’s always loved me, in a way, you know?”_

_Tom blinked, slowly. Harry was beautiful, always beautiful, but even more so when framed by the moonlight. “You got lucky, then.”_

_“I’m sorry, Tom.”_

_And Harry wasn’t apologising for loving Ginny, for not loving Tom, but just a general apology, a mark of pity._

_“Don’t pity me,” was what Tom said, in the end. “I’m not worth it.”_

_“You’ve always been worth it.”_

Not to you, _Tom thinks._ Never to you.

_Harry smiled at him and went inside to see Ginny._

-

Hermione took him to see her parents. They smiled at him as Hermione introduced him, and then they sat him down and handed him chocolate cake.

“Hermione had that look in her eyes, once,” they told him. “It was your friend, the flower one.”

_Pansy_.

“How did you survive?” he asked her, later, and she just looked at him with pain.

“I fell in love with Ron, instead.”

Tom didn’t think he could ever love anyone else, not the way he loved Harry.

He stayed with the Grangers for a whole weekend, eating more homemade chocolate cake than should be necessary, crying into tubs of cheap ice cream, far too sweet and slightly sickly, watching horror movies and forgetting to sleep. He left with swollen eyes and takeaway chips, and a promise to come back some day.

_(Don’t die on us, Tom,_ they don’t say. They don’t need to.)

-

Tom wrote his best man speech at one in the morning, with cheap whiskey and enough tears to cry him through the night. He called Draco, who broke into his house with ibuprofen and decent alcohol and extracted a promise not to drink himself to death without Lucius’ permission.

Draco was still there when he woke up, and Tom sleepily flipped him off.

He didn’t leave, and he made Tom get dressed and wash and eat breakfast, then helped Tom write a decent speech that didn’t accuse Harry of ending the world or profess his love in any way at all.

Draco left Tom with high-quality tissues and an invitation to come and stay with him and Astoria at any time.

(He didn’t tell him he cared, but his actions spoke louder than his words.)

-

Tom taught Harry how to dance for the wedding.

He spun him around, ducked him, pulled him up in time with the music, felt the faint calluses of Harry’s hand against his, tried to imagine that he was marrying Harry, not Ginny, that this was a wedding hall and not Tom’s cramped flat that he barely bothered to clean anymore. Harry smiled that crooked smile of his, teeth white and sparkling, lips curling in the way Tom knew so well.

He’d wonder is Harry realised that Tom watched his lips, except Harry was unobservant at the best of times, and when he was caught up in pre-wedding bliss, he’d never notice the way Tom’s eyes wander the map of creases that reflect Harry’s face, the way his eyelashes shadow his eyes, the way a lock of hair drops across his face and bumps into his nose.

Harry was so kind, and oblivious, and Tom was so in love with him.

-

Tom visited Pansy and Millicent, blissfully in love and enjoying it.

“Did you know?” he asked and doesn’t elaborate. Pansy understood him anyway.

“I did,” she whispered, and she looked so lost. “I just didn’t know how to tell Hermione I didn’t love her back.”

Then Millicent offered to teach Tom how to make their special biscuits, and Tom watched, fascinated, and ate them, cinnamon shortbread dissolving under his tongue as he tried not to think of Harry.

-

_Tom was seventeen, and always gushing about Harry on the rare occasion he wasn’t with him._

_“Are you a couple?” a Hufflepuff asked, innocent and unaware of the way Tom’s heart would fracture, just a little, but enough to send him tumbling into the downward spiral he doubted he’d escape._

_“What?” Harry spluttered, and laughed. “No, of course not. We’re just good friends.”_

_They blinked. “We thought you were gay.”_

_“Nah,” he laughed, shaking his head. “Don’t have a problem with those that are, but not me. I like birds.”_

_Harry’s eyes flitted to Ginny, and they nodded, understanding._

-

Luna sat with him, hands submerged in the dirt, and they watched Neville work on the garden. It was a beautiful place, Tom could see that, even in his state. The Lovegood-Longbottom estate was serene, away from the pitying looks and platitudes or worse, wedding preparations, but even still, Luna and Neville held a quiet but firm kind of love that Tom didn’t need right now.

He wanted to be all alone in the world, or perhaps curled in Harry’s arms, with Harry’s voice telling him that it was all going to be okay, with Harry telling him he loved him, with Harry proposing to him, with Harry—

Delusions wouldn’t help him, either.

Luna nodded, silently, and padded, barefoot, inside, offering Tom some food, and Neville offering Tom a jumper.

He accepted both, and they watched the sun set.

-

Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini tried their best, too.

Their house was cool and dark-panelled, and they got him drunk enough to laugh, and then they let him cry onto their shoulders without judgement.

Sometimes he nearly felt hope, then he became sober and sobbed with an aching head.

He left quite soon after that, and they watched him go.

(At least they’d tried.)

-

Tom visited his parents, which was rare enough, really.

His father haunted the halls, silent and brooding, and his mother lay, sickly, on her bed, and neither of them quite knew what to do with a child they hadn’t asked for, hadn’t needed. His grandparents watched him from their chairs, and then offered him a hug he hadn’t known he needed. He wept into the plush sofa, and they didn’t ask.

“You love Harry Potter,” his father said.

Tom flinched.

“Perhaps you need to move away,” was all the advice he could offer.

Move away from Harry.

It sounded nice, really, but Tom was rooted in his tiny flat, around the corner from the man he loved but who didn’t love him back, and Tom wasn’t sure he could make it.

His mother squeezed his hand and watched him with her sad, soulful eyes.

He’d never liked this place, but he fit better here than he did at _home_ , a home that hadn’t been changed by loving someone else.

This place was a place where everyone had passed desperate, had passed lost, and settled down to make the best life they could from broken.

(Perhaps Tom was broken, too.)

-

Tom came back and slept for a week in a room in Malfoy Manor, and Draco was obnoxious but wonderful all the same, leaving puzzles or complex history books outside Tom’s door, or a tray of food, and Tom took them inside and tried to find a bright spot.

Draco made him shower at least twice a week, and Astoria sat beside him and talked to him, even when Tom didn’t talk back.

Astoria ran him a hot bath and scented it, left it open for him to use and Tom sank under the water and tried to drown in his feelings, then tried to drown in the water.

Narcissa visited her son and asked after Tom, coming to see him just in time to pull him out. She didn’t ask why, and Tom didn’t offer anything either. She ran a hand across his face, and watched him with soft, pitying eyes.

-

Tom stood up and smiled at the wedding, barely touched the champagne or the cake, barely spoke to the guests and tried not to love Harry, which was impossible, because Harry was his sun.

Harry was his normal self, laughing and hugging people, and Tom was dying. Burning himself from the inside out, and Harry didn’t even notice.

Tom gave his best man speech, finishing with, “And I hope you enjoy the new chapter of your new life,” and then his voice cracked as he ended it. “With Ginny Potter.”

-

Tom went home.

-

Home did not feel like home anymore, and Tom curled up with one of Harry’s old sport shirts, from school, that had made its way into Tom’s trunk at the end of term and never made its way back. It still smelt faintly of Harry, and Tom swallowed and felt the hole in his chest ache.

Hermione and Ron came to check on him and didn’t mention the tearstains over the name _POTTER_ or the fact that Tom hadn’t left his house in three weeks. They gave him a number that it took Tom four days to call, and that was how he met Cho Chang.

“Harry’s ex?” he asked, and she nearly nodded, then paused.

“I think I fell in love with the idea of him,” she said. “I just miss Cedric.”

Tom nodded. Cedric had died in a freak accident, and everyone remembered how heartbroken Cho had been.

“Harry was a rebound,” he murmured, and didn’t have to try to not cry, anymore. He felt empty, like he’d simply ran out of tears.

“He was a rebound,” Cho said, “But I think a part of me still loves that idea that I never got to have.”

“How do you survive?”

She offered him a watery smile. “I’m not sure I really do.”

-

_Tom dreamt of playing the piano, of his fingers dancing over the keys. He used to love playing the piano, until it was another thing tainted by a memory of love, lost._

_He had taught Harry to play piano, taught Harry to play songs that were no longer his favourite, songs that ached the same way Tom did._

_In his dreams, Tom played, and Harry laughed, sitting on the bench beside him, leaning into Tom’s warms, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. Harry played the bass part, and Tom played the higher notes, and then they’d stop, laughing, and they would notice how close their faces were, and then Tom would taste Harry’s lips, kissing him and would he taste like vanilla, perhaps, or maybe cherry?_

_In his dreams, he kissed Harry, and laughed with Harry, and loved Harry, and lived with Harry, and—_

-

—woke up alone, a memory ( _not a memory, a dream_ ) of playing the piano half-remembered, and it ached.

-

Tom went back and visited the Grangers, ate more chocolate cake and watched more horror movies. He was glad they didn’t offer romcoms.

They placed hands on his shoulder, shared worried glances, and they all knew what it meant, Tom returning. He was fulfilling his promise to return before he died.

This time, when Tom left, he did so without making any promises other than to think of them often.

(Tom would. Tom would send them a bouquet of tulips the day Harry returned from his honeymoon, and, whilst they were unsigned, the Grangers knew who they were from.)

-

Tom didn’t forget his promises, so he visited Lucius.

Narcissa met him in the hallway and tucked an errant strand of hair behind his ears and led him to Lucius’ study.

She said nothing. She didn’t need to.

Lucius took one look at Tom and handed him the most expensive bottle of wine he owned.

“If you’re going to drink yourself to death, you won’t do it on cheap alcohol when I have a cabinet of nice ones over here.”

Lucius watched him go with a heavy heart and set himself on the task of ruining Harry Potter.

-

With a packet of pills and several bottles of wine, Tom had figured out how he wanted to go. His note was his confession, a simple _I loved you, Harry, and you were too blind to notice._

He was ready to begin when Daphne Greengrass picked his lock and confiscated everything.

“I knew the sunshine boy would break you,” she said, clearing his desk and pulling out a clean suit from _somewhere_ in the wreckage of his flat. “Time to get clean and ready to move, Tommy-boy. We’re going on a world tour.”

Tom cleaned up and packed a bag of anything that he hadn’t ruined, and Daphne took him around the world.

They started closest to home, in London, and they went on the Big Wheel and went on a Duck Boat tour and ate sandwiches in the drizzle outside parliament. They got on the Eurostar and headed to Paris, where they went up the Eiffel Tower and ate pastries and stayed in terrible hotels, had expensive wine and took a sleeper train to Venice.

Venice was beautiful, and they hopped in a gondola and watched the fish swim in the canals and ate pizza wherever they went, before they went to Rome and visited the sites, wandering the wreckage of Pompeii and eating more pizza, and then they spent a week watching the sea in the Amalfi Coast before they went to Pisa and ate more goddamn pizza before leaving Italy and agreeing to never touch pizza ever again.

They went to Spain, to Greece, to Turkey, to China, to Hawaii, to India, to America, and only when they stopped over in New York did they talk about Harry.

-

Harry was in Heaven, the perfect bliss of waking up every morning next to Ginny _Potter_ , of her gentle smile and the way she looked at him, like he was the centre of the world.

(He never noticed Tom did, too.)

He didn’t ask who she texted at three in the morning, because he knew she was texting Tom, although he didn’t know what about.

_gin: tom, hermione told me you loved him_

_gin: i’m so sorry, i didn’t know_

_gin: hope you’re okay_

Harry was startled to see the call from Lucius Malfoy, and worried at what he said.

“ _I’ll burn you,_ ” Lucius hissed, and hung up.

Harry decided to not let it bother him, and rolled over, going to sleep. Ginny slipped in beside him, her breaths steady against his neck.

-

“You don’t have to go back,” Daphne said. “But you will, because you love him.”

Tom watched her, the stars brighter than they were at home, but different. Fresher, freer, but lonely.

“I’ll always go back,” he decided on, the words in his head loud and jumbled. “I feel stifled at home but lost out here.”

She watched him. “I know how you feel.”

He nodded.

“Don’t go back yet.”

“Don’t MI5 want you back soon?”

“They do,” she said. “But I have somewhere to take you first.”

-

And that was how Tom Riddle ended up staying in Tracey Davis’ apartment in California, white and clean and nothing like home.

He played the piano for the first time in months, leant his head against her shoulder as he grew tired of her friends, bouncy and excitable, just as pleasant as Tracey but nowhere near as sharp. Nowhere near as sensitive to the sound of Tom’s heart long shattered, shards being stepped on as he tried to not think about Harry.

There were days where he nearly didn’t, where he nearly submerged him self in the white of the house, of the sound of the keys under his fingers, of Tracey’s singing, but it always led him back to the same thing, the same person: Harry.

What was Harry doing now?

Was he having fun on his honeymoon, or was he missing Tom like Tom missed Harry?

(Harry didn’t miss Tom like Tom missed Harry because Tom was in love with Harry, and Harry was not in love with Tom.)

Tracey could read his broken feelings, the feeling of falling and hitting the ground over and over again, and she fed him and sat with him and watched the stars.

The stars were different in every place, yet somehow the same.

“How do I get rid of it,” Tom choked out, one evening, the tears finally flowing again.

“You can’t get rid of heartbreak,” she said. “You can only move on, and keep living, until the ache dulls and one day you don’t miss them anymore.”

“I’ll always miss Harry,” Tom said, and she watched him walk inside, away from anyone else.

-

Tom went home.

-

Coming home was never the bittersweet feeling he expected, but instead, the drowning feelings of hurt and unsaid words.

He found his phone under nine packets of pills and four empty bottles and read the texts from Ginny.

He responded.

_tom: i doubt i’ll ever be okay_

_tom: i wish you hadn’t married him_

It took him fifteen minutes to regret his message.

(Less than expected.)

-

_tom: i doubt i’ll ever be okay_

_[DELETED]_

_gin: lily and james are expecting you over_

_gin: i told them i screwed up_

_tom: thank you_

_gin: i’ll always care about you_

_gin: i won’t let harry forget you_

_tom: i don’t think i can be fixed_

-

Tom Riddle was not okay.

-

Tom visited the Potters.

They were kinder than he expected, and they looked so much like Harry and Ginny that Tom couldn’t breathe.

They watched him and rested a hand on his back and told him to get some rest, spoke about Harry when he needed them to and taught him to cook or to garden or to pull pranks when he didn’t.

He hadn’t realised how much he needed them.

Lily gave him a number for someone who loved her, and James gave him two numbers for two idiots he didn’t need to see.

-

Tom visited Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, and they were two idiots who he needed to see very much.

They helped him slip into some form of normality, where – even though he was not okay – he ate and slept and drank when he should and jumped and screamed when they pranked him.

He left with perhaps not a lighter heart, but a healthier one, and a shine to his eyes that hadn’t been there in months.

-

Tom Riddle met the dump that Severus Snape lived in and singlehandedly cleaned the entire house, and then bought him brighter clothes. He might’ve been a mess, but he was not going to let anyone else be one.

“Heartbreak hurts,” he said, dumping eight bottles of shampoo and hair conditioner in front of him. “But you’re a better man than this.”

Severus stopped having greasy hair after that and learnt to cook some decent food.

Tom stayed there for a month and left once he was certain Severus would _try_ to pick up the pieces of his life.

_Heartbreak hurts, but they’d showed him he couldn’t let it kill him. Severus was alive, so he better start acting like it._

-

Harry came home, and Tom greeted him.

-

Tom cleaned up his flat and flushed all the pills down the toilet.

-

He had tea with Ginny on the weekends, and he saw Harry from time to time and acted like it wasn’t breaking him.

He sent thank you notes to his friends, folded up Harry’s old top and tucked it into his wardrobe, got drunk at Malfoy Manor and visited his parents.

He watched horror movies with Mr. and Mrs. Granger every Sunday, went on trips with Daphne whenever he could, and came and turned all the lights on in Severus’ house and told him to go and damn well speak to Lily.

He wasn’t ready to be whole again, but he was alive.

It was a start, at least.

-

Tom missed Harry every goddamn day of his life, but he didn’t let it consume him.

-

Tom raised a glass of wine to his lips, eyes burning with his new career, with the life he is successfully leading. He was alive.

(He missed Harry.)

-

He died three days after Harry did, eighty years old, and he missed Harry.

-

Tom opened his eyes. It had been six months since Harry had returned to his honeymoon, and the shreds of his heart still tore at his chest.

It was time to stop missing Harry and start living.

(He loved Harry.)

-

Tom Riddle, thirty-four years old, stepped out of his flat and called Tracey Davis.

“ _Hello, Tracey.”_

“Tom,” she responded, and he could hear how happy she was to know that he had lived.

_“How would you like to try some of Lucius’ best wine?”_

She smiled. “As soon as you get yourself over here.”

-

Tom booked a plane.

(You can love someone and still be free.)

**Author's Note:**

> You could... poke your head into my [Discord server](https://discord.gg/37bXdGW)? I don't bite (much)!
> 
> Alternately, you could pop into my mess of a Tumblr [here](https://goldenzingy46.tumblr.com/), or my writing Tumblr [here](https://goldenzingy46butwriteblr.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Comments and kudos sustain me :)
> 
> [for bribe related reasons, i ask you to go and have a look at user [alfisha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alfisha)'s fics, and they are a damn good writer]


End file.
